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In the past few years, we have been witnesses of rapid evolution in the video industry. The rise of streaming services and new technologies have changed the behaviour of consumers. Today, multiple camera angles and remote post-productions increase amount of high-quality video data which needs to be transmitted. This affects bandwidth requirements more than ever before.

Traditionally, video data are sent via dedicated networks or satellite uplinks for post-production and further distribution. The problem is that these networks are expensive, have to be booked in advance and the bandwidth is limited. Even though the industry has invested many efforts in codec development during the past years, the cost of delivery via reserved links still increases.

However, since the internet has global coverage, the broadcasters start to think about utilizing public networks for live video streaming.

Utilization of the Public Internet

Speaking of real-time video transmission via public internet, Quality and Security are the crucial aspects. The large amounts of packet delay variation (jitter) have to be handled, and packets lost during the transmission (packet loss) recovered to deliver broadcast video quality. While all video data have to stay protected.

This can be solved by proprietary solutions, which are still relatively expensive and lock workflows down to the vendor. Or by open source SRT protocol which is now integrated into Comprimato Live Transcoder 1.3.

Video streaming with SRT

The SRT (Secure Reliable Transport) is an open-source protocol for low-latency video transportation over the public internet. The protocol accounts for packet loss, jitter, and fluctuating bandwidth, maintaining the integrity and quality of the video. The technology uses ARQ mechanism for error recovery to prevent quality degradation, applies encryption which keeps all video data secured from listeners, and easily traverse firewalls.

Furthermore, SRT detects the real-time network performance between the encode/transcode endpoints and dynamically adjusts them for optimal stream performance and quality. It allows to stream video data from any venue despite the unreliable internet connection and monitors remote facility feeds without dedicated networks. Therefore, the solution is perfectly suitable for live sports action or music events.

Last but not least, SRT is codec agnostic. It supports any video or audio media such as JPEG2000, H.265, or H.264 and allows to transfer any UDP video data.

Examples of implementations

Live Transcoder incorporated with SRT has a plethora of applications on both contribution or distribution sides of video workflows. Below, you can see examples of recent applications.

Live video contribution

Very often live video feeds are contributed over dedicated satellite links. Because the satellite uplinks are expensive, it is becoming popular to replace them with more effective public internet connections or mobile 4G and 5G networks.

At the remote location

The camera is connected through SDI to Live Transcoder and video is encoded into H.264

Typical video parameters: 1080i50, H.264, 10mbits

The H.264 video feed is then transported over the internet using the SRT protocol

SRT helps recover from packet losses and allows to traverse firewalls and NATs

High-quality remote video connection

Source video is coming from the camera over SDI connection or as an IP streams

A video is encoded into JPEG2000 TR-01 at 150 to 300 Mbps and contributed over high quality public or dedicated long haul video link

SRT is used to recover from packet losses and jitter

A video is received and can be transcoded from the TR-01 to H.264 or to 2110 IP stream.

Conclusion

SRT support for Live Transcoder allows transporting the best quality live video over even the most unpredictable networks. It is applicable to contribution and distribution endpoints as part of your video stream workflows. The whole solution lowers delivery costs. It is software-based and hardware agnostic.

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